European-American Entanglements in the Modern World

The videos are available and outlined below. The full set of units for the interactive lecture series European-American Entanglements in the Modern World is available here. The videos feature both English and German subtitles, with the learning activities currently only available in German.

The series is hosted at the virtuelle hochschule bayern (vhb)/ Bavarian virtual university, and was produced in collaboration with the Centre for University and Academic Teaching (ZHW) at UR. The project was coordinated at the ScienceCampus by Judith Steinmetz who has as a research assistant did an incredibly professional job in getting this project online. We would like to thank everyone, including visiting professors of the ScienceCampus, who have contributed videos, Claudia Sadowski-Smith, Jean Marc Moura, Anna Mazurkiewicz, Campus doctoral researchers Jon Matlack and Thalia Prokopiou, and colleagues from IOS Regensburg and UR: Ulf Brunnbauer, Gerlinde Groitl Mathias Häußler, and Dagmar Schmelzer, who have contributed to series. The preview includes an introduction by Paul Vickers and Judith Steinmetz, too.

The themes covered include current and historical migration, environmental issues, Cold War history and its political legacies, Québec's independence movement and postcolonial linguistic and literary entanglements of the Francophone world, and the transatlantic circulations of popular culture.

The aim of the course is to provide insights into empirical area studies research and diverse methods. The units can be used by students, the public, or as part of blended learning by university teachers and lecturers. The materials should be accessible to all, likewise outside Bavaria. The materials are currently available on the OER format, as part of the ScienceCampus' commitment to Open Science. In Winter Semester 2023/24, we will also provide the materials within the vhb Smart format, enabling their incorporation into Bavarian higher education institutions' curricula.

Programme

Talk 1 | Paul Vickers and Judith Steinmetz (U Regensburg)
Introduction

Talk 2 | Dagmar Schmelzer (U Regensburg)
L‘Autre Amérique – die „langen 1968er Jahre“ und die Oktoberkrise 1970 in Québec

Talk 3 | Anna Mazurkiewicz (U Gdansk)
Assembly of Captive European Nations

Talk 4 | Jean-Marc Moura (U Paris Nanterre) 
Frankophone Literaturwissenschaft. Auf dem Weg zu einer transatlantischen Literaturgeschichte

Talk 5 | Claudia Sadowski-Smith (Arizona State U)
Climate Migration Fiction

Talk 6 | Gerlinde Groitl(U Regensburg)
Die europäisch-amerikanischen Sicherheitsbeziehungen

Talk 7 | Mathias Häußler (U Regensburg)
“Elvis wird Deutscher!” - Der King of Rock ‘n’ Roll und das Aufkommen einer transatlantischen Jugendkultur

Talk 8 | Jon-Wyatt Matlack(LSC/U Regensburg)
Militärische Notwendigkeit und die "westliche" Art des Kriegs

Talk 9 | Ulf Brunnbauer(U Regensburg)
Die translokale Nation. Südosteuropäische Diasporas in den USA vor 1914

Talk 10 | Thalia Prokopiou (U Regensburg)
Neo-Ökofaschismus. Die grünen Schattierungen der Neofaschisten
 

Climate Change: Action and Law in the Global South and Beyond the West

This lecture series adresses one of the pressing questions of human kind – climate change. It approaches this issue from different disciplines ranging from law to ethnography. Legislation and especially the Paris Agreement have been a step towards international cooperation in combating climate change – now actions and implementation need to follow. Questions about deforestation, litigation, the circular economy, and sustainable urban planning will be adressed in different regions in the Global South and beyond the West.

Summer Semester 2023 | Mondays | 16:15–17:45 | H14

Organized by Prof. Dr. Rike Krämer-Hoppe (DIMAS/ Law, UR) and Dr. Paul Vickers (DIMAS / ScienceCampus)

Get the poster here

Programme

17 April | Rike Krämer-Hoppe (Regensburg) & Paul Vickers (Regensburg)
Introduction
– recommended for students only

24 April | Tiago Fensterseifer (São Paulo)
Climate Change Litigation in Brazil
The lecture will address current climate litigation action in Brazil as well as the recent political change and the new opportunities that come with it. In a recent decision the Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF, Supreme Court of Brazil) declared the Paris Agreement a human rights treaty.

8 May | Maria Cecilia Oliveira (Potsdam) and Michael Riegner (Erfurt)
Film & Discussion | Jatun Yaku: Amazon of Rights
Jatun Yacuis the indigenous name, in Quechua language, for one of the tributaries of the Amazon river in Ecuador. As the Amazon river flows from its source to the Atlantic Ocean, it crosses four countries with different legal systems. This pilot documentary film traces the ebb and flow of rights in and of the Amazon across space and time, ethnographically exploring the question of what it means for a river to have rights, where these rights come from and what they might look like visually. The session will include a showing of the film as well as discussion with its creators, Maria Cecilia Oliveira (Potsdam) and Michael Riegner (Erfurt).

15 May | Yi Yi Prue (Dhaka, Bangladesh)
Climate Litigation within and outside of Bangladesh
The lecture will dive into the climate issues pressing in Bangladesh. It will adress litigation efforts in Bangladesh as well as in Germany.

22 May | Yvonne Donders (Amsterdam)
The Human Rights Commission and the Torre Strait Decision
The lecture will give an overview of the UN Human Rights Committee and its work. The Torre Strait Decision is a landmark decision of the Committee in which it found that Australia's failure to adequately protect indigenous Torres Strait Islanders against adverse impacts of climate change was a breach of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

5 June | Simone Sandholz (Bonn)
Urban Climate Action in Cities
The lecture elaborates the possibilities as well as necessities for the transformation of urban planning. Especially in the global south cities need to adapt to climate change.

12 June | Christiane Heibach (Regensburg)
Ecology and Art: Aesthetic Engagement on Climate Change

19 June | Rike Krämer-Hoppe (Regensburg) – via Zoom, not in H14
The German Federal Constitutional Court Climate order and the Global South

26 June no talk this week

3 July | double header of talks by doctoral researchers at the Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies at UR
Magdolna Molnar (Regensburg) – Common misconceptions about sustainability: Examples from the European Green Deal
Miloš Đurović (Regensburg) – Reflecting on the visions and practices of “environmental sustainability” between the European centre and its periphery
In this session, two doctoral researchers based at the Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies at UR will present talks based on their ongoing research. Magdolna Molnár (Regensburg) will disscuss "Common misconceptions about sustainability: Examples from the European Green Deal" while Miloš Đurović (Regensburg) will be "Reflecting on the visions and practices of “environmental sustainability” between the European centre and its periphery". Magdolna Molnár will focus on the issue of European waste recycling policy, looking in particular at efforts to establish circular economy practices with electronic waste. Miloš Đurović reflects on the notion of environmental sustainability – its conceptualisation, implementation, and multifaceted and blurry character – focusing mainly on the nexus between the European centre and its periphery.

The talks take place in person in H14 and all are welcome to attend. Outlines of the talks are available below.

10 July Oliver C Ruppel (Graz / Stellenbosch U)
Climate Litigation and Action in Africa
This lecture will address pressing climate issues from an African perspective. It will inter alia elaborate on selected litigation efforts and other climate activities in selected African countries.

17 July for students only: Klausur/Test!

Frictions and Transformations of Globalization

In cooperation with the Center for International and Transnational Area Studies (CITAS) at the University of Regensburg; the program is available here to download and outlined below.

Motion produces frictions. These have the potential to stall, inhibit or halt shifts. But frictions also release energy, thus producing new movements. Whether in large-scale tectonic shifts or micro-level encounters, interactions between people, technologies, ideas, natural conditions, and the flows of capital and goods shape the diverse, long-term and often contradictory processes termed globalization. It has become apparent that globalization is neither a smooth nor unidirectional process;  but rather it is something that undergoes constant challenges, re-direction, and re-appropriation so that its course is neither predictable nor controllable. Nor, for that matter, has globalization led to convergence; rather it has given rise to new divergences across and within countries and continents.

This lecture series focuses on three interlinked elements that are crucial to understanding globality in its diversity across multiple spaces and throughout history: the environment, migration and labor. Drawing on the expertise of colleagues in Regensburg and around the world, the lecture series will offer interdisciplinary perspectives informed by area studies that combine macro-perspectives and critical place-oriented scholarship, in order to highlight the intersections between different scales. Rather than posit a seamless globalization, the speakers highlight the productive and destructive frictions emerging from the interaction and interdependencies between local action and large-scale forces. In this story, natural resources, mobility and human labor are paramount.

The lectures will offer insights on Eastern and Western Europe, North and South America, indicating connections to other world regions and worldwide institutions, as well as highlighting how the global condition is made and remade in local sites and through translocal connections.

Speakers include academics from Regensburg, visiting fellows of the Leibniz ScienceCampus from the USA and Spain, as well as invited guests from Germany and abroad.

Summer Semester 2022 | Mondays | 18:15–19:45 | H19 (Sammelgebäude) 

Programme

click the links for more details

25 April | Ulf Brunnbauer (IOS Regensburg)
Introduction; Presentation of the Award-Winning Students in the 2021 Area Studies Master’s Prize

02 May | Jean-Marc Moura (Paris Nanterre)
Francophone Literatures as Migrant Literatures. Between a Postcolonial and a Global History of Literature

09 May | Ronald Suny (U Michigan, Ann Arbor)
Forging the Nation: The Making and Faking of Nationalisms in Our Own Times

16 May | Kate Wroblewski (U Michigan, Ann Arbor) 
Fit For Citizenship?: Polish Migration and the Politics of Respectability in the Early Twentieth Century

Thursday 19 May, 16:15 via Zoom | Kristen Ghodsee and Mitchell Orenstein (University of Pennsylvania)
Taking Stock of Shock: Social Consequences of the 1989 Revolutions

30 May | Sinem Ayhan (IOS Regensburg)
Distributional Effects of Climate Policies and Decarbonization Challenges in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

13 June | Ben Chappell (U Kansas)
What is the "American Model"? Learning Management and Knowledge Ideologies in a “Moment of Danger” for Universities

20 June | Attila Melegh (Corvinus U, Budapest)
Globalization and the Migration Turn. Why Migration Has Become a Polarizing Issue

27 June | Nishani Frazier (U Kansas)
The Sounds of Blackness: How Gentrification Silences and Displaces Belonging

04 July | Ger Duijzings (UR)
Between Europeanisation and Waste Colonialism: Dirty Dumping at the Periphery of Europe

11 July | Hartmut Lehmann (IOS Regensburg)
Globalization, Inequality and the Labor Market – 1970 to 2010

18 July | Celia Torrecillas Bautista (Complutense, Madrid)
Exports and Outward Foreign Direct Investment as Drivers of Eco-Innovations. An Analysis Based on Spanish Manufacturing Firms

25 July | Exam/Klausur

Rethinking Area Studies and Space from the "Global South"? Post/Colonial Perspectives and Glocal Challenges

Area Studies is a per se interdisciplinary research field that can contribute fruitfully to understanding societies and cultures in the context of both historical and ongoing globalization processes. Nevertheless, owing to their specific genealogy, area studies have also faced critique in respect of their methods, theories and thematic foci. Even if there has been a turn towards critical self-reflection in area studies, leading to increasing recognition of the field’s imperial and colonial legacies, voices from the different world regions constituting its focus nevertheless remain underrepresented – those from Asia, Africa, the Americas, and East and Southeast Europe in particular. In order to better understand cultures and societies in respect of their glocal power relations, it is necessary to explore how area studies and space can be contextualized through the perspectives of the ”Global South” and what role, for example, virtual spaces (could) play in this.

This interdisciplinary lecture series therefore offers a multiperspectival reconceptualization of area studies and relevant concepts of space in dialog with the ”Global South”. The series seeks to demonstrate the necessity of revising certain scholarly and cultural paradigms, while pointing towards ways of achieving dialogic reconfigurations of knowledge production.

The interdisciplinary and transcultural lecture series features (inter)national experts with case studies and theoretical contributions from fields including social anthropology, museum studies, history, sociology, linguistics, cultural studies, literary studies and media studies. Alongside specialists from Regensburg, there will also be contributions from Ciraj Rassool (University of the Western Cape, South Africa), Sérgio Costa (Lateinamerika-Institut Berlin), Sinah Kloß (Dependency and Slavery Studies, Universität Bonn), Silke Jansen (FAU Erlangen), Ana Nenadovic (Lateinamerika-Institut Berlin) and Johannes Bohle (Europa-Universität Flensburg).

Coordinators: Prof. Dr. Anne Brüske und Joanna Moszczynska

Summer Semester 2021 | Thursdays | 19:45–18:15 | Via Zoom

Programme

15 April | Sinah Kloß (Bonn)
Un-Mapping the 'Global South': Reflections on a Heuristic Concept

22 April | Ciraj Rassool (Cape Town)
Public History as Counter-Museology: Journeys through Museum Transformation in Africa and Europe

29 April | Anna Steigemann (Regensburg)
The City of the 21st Century, Mobile Spatial Practices, and Glocal Spatial Knowledge: A Spatial Sociology for Multi-Scalar Area Studies

6 May | Silke Jansen & Lucía Romero Gibu (Erlangen)
"Wir" und "Ihr": Sprachwissenschaftliche Perspektiven auf den sozialen Raum im Migrationskontext

20 May | Isabella von Treskow (Regensburg)
Oran, Alger, Sétif: Raumsemiotik bei Hélène Cixous, Kateb Yacine und Mohammed Dib

27 May | Mirja Lecke & Oleksandr Zabirko (Regensburg)
Wie Russland seinen Süden entwarf

10 June | Johannes Bohle (Flensburg)
'Follow-the-Hurricane-Geographies': Geographische Impulse für Area Studies am Beispiel der Karibik

17 June | Ulf Brunnbauer (Regensburg)
Balkan und Südosteuropa, und Beyond: Wie eine Region sich selbst sieht

24 June | Sérgio Costa (Berlin)
'Entangled Inequalities': Transregionale Perspektiven auf soziale Ungleichheiten

1 July | Ana Nenadović (Berlin)
Das Internet schlägt zurück: Das Internet als Raum feministischen Widerstands aus dem Globalen Süden

8 July | Andreas Sudmann (Regensburg)
KI Area Studies und der Globale Süden

15 July | Jochen Mecke (Regensburg)
'The Global South goes North': Von "négritude" (Césaire, Senghor) zur "raison nègre" (Mbembe)

Special Relations Revisited: Europa und die USA seit dem 19. Jahrhundert 

The lecture series "Special Relations Revisited" examined European-American entanglements in topics such as foreign affairs and security policy, diplomacy and migration policy, and more. Moving in a mostly chronological order, the talks shed light on two centuries of transatlantic connections and covered a variety of issues and fields such as popular culture, the fight against slavery, and European migration to the US.

An interdisciplinary group of scholars from the University of Regensburg and the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS) was joined by renowned researchers from German and international institutions. This event was organized in collaboration with CITAS.

Winter Semester 2020/21 | Mondays | 18:15–19:45 | Via Zoom

Programme

2 November | Hedwig Richter (Bundeswehr Uni, München)
Demokratiegeschichte als nationale Erzählung und transnationaler Prozess. Frankreich, die USA und Deutschland im 19. Jahrhundert

9 November | Ulf Brunnbauer
Amerika-Auswanderung und (ost)europäische „Diasporen” vor dem 1. Weltkrieg

16 November | Volker Depkat
Amerikanische Demokratie als politisches Ordnungsmodell von 1789 bis 1848/49

23 November | Pia Wiegmink
The 'Freedom-Loving German' in America: Negotiating Gender, Antislavery and Immigration in 19th Century German American Women’s Literature

30 November | Dagmar Schmelzer
L'Autre Amérique. Die europäische Wahrnehmung Québecs und des quebecer Separatismus als Alternative zu US-Amerika

7 December | Friederike Kind-Kovács (TU Dresden)
Cotton, Shoes and Milk Powder: Transatlantic Child Relief in post-World War I Central Europe

14 December | Mathias Häußler
Wie amerikanisch war Elvis? Die Entstehung einer transatlantischen Popkultur im Kalten Krieg

11 January | Klaus Buchenau
Ex occidente lux(us). Religiöse Impulse aus den USA im östlichen Europa des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts

18 January | Katharina Gerund (FAU Erlangen)
Unofficial Ambassadors? Military Spouses in the Transatlantic World

25 January | Gerlinde Groitl
Vom amerikanischen Frieden zum Rosenkrieg? Die sicherheitspolitische Beziehungskrise zwischen Europa und den USA

1 February | Marlene Laruelle (George Washington University)
Looking at post-Soviet Eurasia from Europe and the US: Divergences of Perspectives and Shared Visions

8 February | Abschlussdiskussion / Concluding Panel Discussion
Europa und Amerika 2021 – wohin?
Mit Beiträgen von Prof. Dr. Lora Anne Viola (JFK Institute, Berlin) und Dr. Jana Puglierin (European Council on Foreign Relations - ECFR, Berlin)
Chair: Dr. Gerlinde Groitl (UR)

15 February | Exam